Car giants giving false hope of emission-free future, report says

Ben Webster, Environment Editor

Car companies are raising false hopes of emission-free motoring in order to continue profiting from large, fuel-hungry vehicles, according to a study.
Cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells are not expected to be available widely until after 2050 because of the high cost of the platinum in their catalysts. Battery-powered vehicles will also remain a niche product because of their limited battery life.
The University of Oxford study, edited by Sir David King, the Government’s former chief scientific adviser, found that the most effective way of reducing overall emissions from motoring would be a “drastic downscaling of both size and weight” of conventional petrol and diesel cars.
It urges the Government to impose higher taxes on drivers of large, inefficient vehicles and to reinvest the proceeds in better public transport and measures to encourage walking and cycling. The authors accuse car manufacturers of exaggerating the potential for switching to hydrogen or battery-powered vehicles in the next decade.

Last September seven manufacturers — Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Renault-Nissan and Toyota — published a joint statement saying that they “strongly anticipate that from 2015 onwards a quite significant number of electric vehicles with fuel cell could be commercialised. This number is aimed at a few hundred thousand units.”
However, there are only a few hundred fuel cell vehicles on the roads today and car companies have given them to celebrities, such as the actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who drives a Honda fuel cell, in order to maximise the publicity that they receive.
Oliver Inderwildi, research fellow at Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and Environment and the report’s lead author, called existing fuel cell cars were a marketing gimmick.
“Car companies need to be more honest about the choices we are facing. Their argument is that people can continue to drive 4X4s because in a couple of years they will be able to switch to a fuel cell 4X4,” he said “We think that won’t happen and that we must instead reduce fuel consumption by going for lighter and smaller cars.”
He said that a fuel-cell car needed about 50 grams of platinum, which would cost about £2,500. The price of the metal would be driven up by an increase in fuel-cell production.
Mr Inderwildi dismissed claims by some manufacturers, including General Motors, that they could cut the amount of platinum in a fuel cell to 30g or less.
“We are convinced that that’s another marketing move rather than something ready for mass production,” he said.
The report also found that fuel cells were subject to corrosion, giving them a much shorter life than conventional engines. The authors point out that emissions savings depend on whether the electricity or hydrogen came from renewable sources. At present, most is produced from burning fossil fuels.
The report says: “We conclude that road transport will continue to rely on the internal combustion engine. Electric vehicles will remain a small percentage of the overall fleet composition up to the medium to long-term. Widespread use of hydrogen transport is unlikely, except perhaps in the long term after 2050.”
The report predicts that the number of cars will double to two billion globally by 2030, largely because of growing demand from China and India.
A spokesman for the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said that the Oxford study was too pessimistic.
He said: “We believe there will be mass market electric vehicles by 2020 and mass market fuel cell vehicles by 2025 to 2030, assuming technology progresses at the expected rate.”